31 Days Of Space: The Spooky Frontier – Under The Skin

A man on a motorcycle (Jeremy McWilliams) stops on the side of the road and walks into the ditch. He comes back up with a woman’s body which he drops in the back of a white van. In white space, a naked woman (Scarlett Johansson) undresses the dead woman and puts on her clothes. When she’s finished she notices an ant which she picks up and looks at.

The woman goes and gets more clothes and starts driving around in the van. She picks up random men and takes them back to her place where they end up walking into a black liquid void instead of getting lucky. The woman goes out to get more men.At a beach the woman tries to pick up a swimmer but gets interrupted by a drowning couple. She knocks out the swimmer and takes him away leaving the couple to die and the couples baby crying abandoned on the beach. Later the woman picks up a man with a facial disfigurement but lets him live. The man on the motorcycle starts chasing after her.

Under the Skin was directed by Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast). Glazer shot the movie sort of guerilla style with Johansson actually driving around Scotland picking up real strangers while a film crew secretly filmed them. The men would then later sign on to the film once they found out what was really going on.

The movie is creepy, surreal and not what you’d expect from a film that’s plot description is naked alien woman picks up men to harvest them. Johnsson is excellent as she has to carry the entire film with her performance of an outsider looking at the human race. Excellent film for those looking for something different.